We the warm temps reaching for the sky so will be these cool season crops…as in bolting. Y’all can’t say I didn’t warn you about a back to back pickup…This is the week we need our shareholders back on the farm. Just to entice you though our strawberries are at their peak of perfection…and they are yours to take home. Here is the pickup schedule for this week. Please post on our facebook page if you would like the mid-week pickup time. Thanks, Peggy
Thursday 4-6 pm
Saturday 9-12
I knew it! I just knew we would dive head first into summer with little to no spring…Well I guess that goes along with the rest of this freaky early season. The farm over the past week as been on quite the growing spurt. When I left last week to go on a four day tour we were still pretty small in growth of the crops…I came how to a different farm. The rain and warm weather has more than just the bermuda grass growing. Our CSA shareholders and farm visitors heads up there are tons of our english roses blooming and waiting to go home with you…mind you they are thorny so you might want to bring gloves this Saturday.
You will be amazed at how wonderful these roses smell. Truly one of my all-time favorite flowers. A couple of other crops are coming in and a couple going out this week. One of these crops that is ready to harvest is the broccoli and yes it is super yummy. This is the first cut meaning we are taking the main head from the center..but the wonderful part about this crop is that the side shoots will keep producing for a couple more weeks or so. Another crop that is coming in right now is Kohlrabi. I am not sure if I will have enough yet to fill all the CSA shares but..don’t fret you all will get them in the weeks to come. They are delicious!
YAY! The strawberries are beginning to ripen up and we just might some in time for the CSA and market this week…no big promise but I am sure keep my fingers crossed.
We are going to open the farm market this Saturday 9am. to the public. Excited!
CSA Shareholders, you have your 2nd pickup this Saturday. Let get all this farming rockin’ .
It may feel like April and it may be a wet as our normal April weather but it is in deed May. This spring season with all the weather issues…being too cold in March and too cold then too warm in April the farm’s crops are running 3 weeks behind what they normally would be this time of year. Of course being the weather watcher I am…years of farming makes me that way, anyway this is the latest I haven’t been able to get my CSA shareholders on the farm in 4 years. We were rained out last weekend and this Saturdays isn’t fairing any better by the looks of things. We that being said I am throwing this out there…because we do have crops that need to go home with y’all…I am going to shoot for a Sunday pickup this weekend for our new shareholders….pay attention here, my ADD can get all confusing to y’all at this point. Here we go…buckle up:)
If you are a new shareholder in our CSA program I would love to get y’all on the farm SUNDAY MAY 12th. 1:30pm. for your pickup and little farm tour and to tell y’all the ins & out of the program. If this date posses a problem for you please email me and I try to workout another time this week for you to pickup.
For our Shareholders that have been in our CSA in past seasons this note is for y’all: You can pickup on Sunday 1:30pm with the rest of the shareholders or you can pickup during the week…Thursday & Friday 3-6pm just email me and I will get your baskets ready to go…madisoncreekfarms@gmail.com
In your baskets this pickup
Kale
Baby Lettuce mix
Spring onions
Spinach
Farm eggs
Radishes
Asparagus
Herbs
We have a slow moving low pressure system that will be moving into our area tonight through early Sunday dumping a lot of rain on the farm. We will reschedule the CSA gathering asap but will need to cancel tomorrows pickup. Just wanted to let everyone know what is happening and like I said we plan on rescheduling for next week. Thanks, Peggy
Rainbows & Old farmer Mark
We are gearing up for our first CSA pickup of the season and I am having to make the call for all of our Shareholders to keep an eye out on the weather and possible cancellation of the gathering we have scheduled for Saturday 10:30am. So y’all may be getting a taste of what a real farm and your produce goes through early on. Depending on how much rain and the timing this could get kinda tricky deciding on what to do. With that I am asking our CSA Shareholders to pay close attention to our Facebook page either from the facebook site…or checking the facebook window on our website This is where i will let everybody know what we are dealing with in terms of rescheduling our pickup and gathering for next weekend. I will post on Friday which I know doesn’t give y’all much time and I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause…we are on mother natures time and watch right now. If you have any questions you can email me. Thanks Peggy
Hi, Long time no hear from I know…we have been busy busy around here. I do apologize for not keeping up with the blog/farm news. So I have some catching up to do and I won’t waste a lot of time here in the beginning.
CSA Update & Gathering Information
The weather this spring as been crazy, March too cold, April too warm we haven’t had much in the way of good farming weather. We are running about 3 weeks behind were we have been in previous springs in crops ready or planting. We normally have our CSA gathering in end of April with your first pickup. This spring we will have to schedule it for early May.
CSA Gathering and 1st pickup Date Saturday May, 4th. 10:30 am
For those of you that new to the CSA the gathering is so important this is where we walk you through the program, tell you all the little ins & outs about how the CSA works and how to make the most of the program. We also feed you a little lunch…yes! That is right…lunch is on us. So please mark your calendars for May 4th. 10:30 to come to the farm.
It is that time of year again when we open our spring & summer CSA for our shareholders to sign up. We are working hard to get our new website up and I will be so excited to see it up and running. But for now this is what I am working with:)
For those of you that have downloaded the new 2013 CSA handbook I have added a paypal button here for you to complete your order for your share this season. Having had to do our new sign ups like this we didn’t include our basket fee for new shareholders which is $20.00. We will need collect that fee during your first pickup. The link below is for shareholders that are paying in full for their share only. I will post a link to our paypal page for those shareholders that are paying half now and the remainder of their share price at the first pickup later this week. Thank you for your understanding of my limited website skills…which seem to weakening more and more…ha..ha.
Update 2/16/13 The Spring & Summer CSA is Full.
We have a lot going on this month on the farm with the field getting a much needed dose of love through amendments and a deep layer of compost. We have several beds that need repaired or our raised bed wood replaced all together. We are also cleaning up and adding to our kids natural play area. Lucca and I are so excited about this. We have a climbing wall and swings going in as well as some other cool features. For the past week or so I have been working on a new propagation house for our seedlings this spring. These little babies need extra care and love to grow strong and do well in the early part of season. I am keeping it simple with just a hoop house design but encompassing some passive solar energy by way of attaching it to a south-facing wall. This way I am using the heat generated through the sun’s reflection off this wall to keep my hoop house nice and warm. I will post some pictures as soon as I get house finished. Be sure to remember to check our Facebook page for all the latest news and happenings. If you have any trouble with the paypal link please let me know…I will need to dig into fixing that:)
Okay, it is clear for those of you that have visited the farm’s blog before that I am playing around with the design. I have always designed our farm’s website and my friend Anna designed the blog for me. Last summer I switched from a pc to a new mac computer and well…my web designing days are behind me until I learn a new system and how to design without my old faithful frontage program to do the hard work for me. I thought iweb would be the ticket but Apple thought better and took it off the market…something about they don’t make any money with people designing their own website…whatever:) Anyway I am leaning toward bring the farm’s website and blog together on a WordPress platform making it easier for me to keep the site current and updated even when I travel. Which was a big draw-back with the website being a HTML only site anyway. To update and change the site you have to go into the whole site…and times have changed. So I have two choices and I intend on using them both. Hire a good WordPress designer…and work along side them designing the new site. I don’t like not having ….here we go the magic word “control” or knowledge when it comes to designing our new site. If I want to change something I want to know how to do it myself. So please excuse our website mess for a while it will take some time to get everything up and running. The farm’s site is still as is..and will remain that way until we have the new site ready. This blog is my playground learning CSS coding and all that bah bah geeky talk. With that said it might be fun to check back and see the progress..or mess:)
Why is it when you get older time just flies by? I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drive…to drink…to move from my parents home…now in a blink of an eye it seem a whole year as past. This is becoming a quick fall as well…to me anyway. Lucca my 10 year old son thinks his fall break from school is taking its time…but for me wasn’t it just May? We here on the farm have been getting ready for our Fall Festival Oct. 13th. 4-8pm. It is shaping up to loads of fun for the whole family…and I do hope you will stop by and enjoy some great food, games, arts and crafts and well as PUMPKINS! Yes, what a concept getting your pumpkins from a farm:) The Fall Fest has free admission and miles of family memories to be made. Lots of stuff for your little ones to do…like the carnival games and hay stack slide…plus we have our scarecrows on the farm and Lucca’s haunted tree fort. I mentioned food…Ole yes, some great food planned as well as all our homemade fall pies and goodies. So tell your friends…this is grassroots advertising..hence..no admission charge..y’all know me..keep it simple. Please help spread the word by posting this flyer on your Facebook page…I love ya…and many thanks.
CSA Pickup & updates
Our Fall Shareholders have their pickup this Saturday…and some wonderful items this week:)
Acorn Squash…one of my favorite fall squashes…so sweet and yummy it should be referred to as a dessert squash.
Sweet Potatoes are what is in season…and they are fabulously long keepers. Ya’ll will need to try our sweet potato fries we are serving for the Fall Fest…or Feast..how ever you want to look at it. If you need me to put your basket back in the cooler…email me please…we are cutting greens Saturday morning and if we don’t hear from you you will have a basket of wilted greens…or a basket of no greens. I hope you all are enjoying the fall season in your CSA…it is about to become a fully fall basket of the next few pickups. If you need to pickup after 12pm..email me and your basket will be in the cooler…thanks, Peggy
Welcome to The Female Farmer! Life on a 38 acre organic farm...it's not always banjo's and butterflies out here on the farm, People!
Summertime!
Okay, So I will admit I am a spring season person…I love everything about spring time. It all feels new and fresh and wonderful. The heat starts kicking in and that summer sun takes over my days…making my job as a farm a lot less enjoyable. But that is all part of it and friends the summer heat is steadily rising out there where the wild thangs grow. This weekend we will be seeing the last of the lettuces and the salad greens in our CSA baskets and at the market. June is a transitional month for crops with the cool season produce ending and the warm season crops coming on. This week we will be harvesting swiss chard and sugar snap peas. These are one of my favorite crops to grow mostly because I get to snack on them while I and working out in the field.
Sugar snap peas are wonderful to eat raw. You can toss them into salads pod and all. You don’t need to shell these type of peas and they are really good lightly steamed as well. The kids like them for their sweet taste and yes they are healthy too:)
Another fresh harvest this week at the market and in our CSA is Swiss Chard. I tend to think of this wonderful large leaf green as the spinach of warm weather. It is in the beet family and very mild in taste. Just a quick sauté and it’s ready. By all mean chop up the stem as well it has great texture and taste great too.
The flowers are beginning to bud out and some are blooming but we are still a week or so away from any real showing in the flower department but once they do start it is an amazing sight for the next few months.
We are a couple of weeks away from our blackberries being ready and I will tell you I can’t wait. It looks like a bumper crop this year on the blackberry patch. There are buds all over the plants. This week we are sowing more tomatoes and squash and beans and still even more flowers. Although the days are getting hotter the work doesn’t stop…but that must be why God made good cold creeks to cool off in:)
CSA News & Update
This Saturday is a pickup date please remember to bring your baskets back to the farm we are running short.
For those that would like to cut an extra bag of lettuce and kale for your baskets you are welcome to. Just asked Jane for an extra bag and head on out to the field and help your self.
Market 9am.
The last of the Strawberry/Rhubarb pies…freshly baked and delicious!
Brown butter & Banana muffins
Strawberry lemonade muffins
Lavender Short bread cookies…OMG these are to die for! Made with our lavender and our own freshly churned sweet cream butter!